Sustainable Mathematics

To think of numbers as something that makes you feel, is a seemingly wild concept. This is one of the things that made me stop while reading Moshe Renert's article: "humans' inability to feel large numbers". This passage really resonated with me because I never felt of numbers having a feeling attached to them. I think this additionally ties in with what Jo Boaler & the Stephen Wolfram were trying to argue in their talks. In particular, their emphasis on that 75% of mathematics should be in real-world (25% in computation), whereas we often put more of an emphasis on the computation portion of mathematics. In this way, it makes more sense to me why Renert's statement of feeling numbers felt like a weird concept. 

Another thing that made me stop was honestly the title of the article, "Sustainable Mathematics Education". In reading the title, I had no idea what to expect from the article. Of course, I knew that mathematics and statistics play a vital in addressing issues in sustainability, however, to think of mathematics as a subject being sustainable didn't make sense to me. Throughout the article I was happily surprised at how my initial changed! 

What should we do as math teachers in the situation of the present climate crisis? Big question. I think first, educating ourselves on the climate crisis. As someone who wasn't taught to "feel large numbers", I think I need to take it upon myself to read & educate myself so that I can feel those large numbers. In the classroom, I think a good start is sharing resources with students, and using examples really similar to Renert's: "a bite of beef stresses the earth's limited agricultural resources 34 times more than a bite of chicken". Using world problems, projects, and examples to demonstrate why mathematics is important and relevant (like saving our planet) to students is a good start. 

Additionally, I would love to talk to and collaborate with other teachers in the school to see how we can tackle this problem together, across subjects. The climate crisis is a scary topic, and can be very "hopeless" if not talked about correctly, and I think its the responsibility of all educators to be united on how we bring this into the classroom.